Background & Education

I studied “Cultuur en Wetenschapstudies” (Arts and Culture) at the University of Maastricht and graduated in 2005 in the Technological Culture Tracé, which is closely related to Science and Technology Studies (STS). In 2008 I completed my training at the WTMC graduate school. In 2010, I was a visiting PhD student at the Centre for Science Studies at Lancaster University for several months. During this period I was supervised by dr. Maggie Mort, dr. Celia Roberts and prof. dr. Lucy Suchman.

Research

I’m a PhD student at the STePS group of the University of Twente. My thesis – supervised by prof. dr. Nelly Oudshoorn – focuses on the ways in which engineers, designers and other professionals involved in the design of Ambient Intelligence technologies devise representations of older users. I study how these images of the prospective older user emerge, how they influence the design of Ambient Intelligence technologies, how these technologies fit in the use practices of older people and how these technologies are perceived by older people.

My thesis will comprise four empirical chapters. The first of these chapters deals with the way the user is represented in visions of the future of AmI. The second chapter analyzes the user representations that emerged in laboratory tests with a human-interaction robot and older test users. The third chapter focuses on a pre-market pilot test of an AmI monitoring system for older people and analyses how the user was represented, how this affected the design of the system and how the older people responded to the system. Overall, the build-up of these three chapters is such that user representations are studied from the conception of Ambient Intelligence till the actual use practices in the homes of older people. The fourth empirical chapter subsequently reflects upon the way a particularly important issue – dealing with the diversity of older people – is addressed in the first three cases.

The goal of my thesis is to reflect on theories of representing users, to bring insights from social (critical) gerontology into STS (and vice versa) and to provide some tools or suggestions for designers to make their user representations more reflexive.